


Keeping out the Cold

by 401



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Conditioning, M/M, PTSD, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 16:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4674347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/401/pseuds/401
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve hates seeing Bucky on missions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping out the Cold

Steve had known that there would be a time when he would have to see Bucky in ‘mission mode’. The conditions of him not being arrested for his crimes as the Winter Soldier were that he would become an Avenger, an agent of SHEILD. It was inevitable that one day Steve would have to face up to the fact that there was still a sizable splinter of Bucky’s past conditionings and instincts lodged deep inside of him, he just had not thought that it would upset him as much as it did.

“You’re _sure_ you aren’t hungry?” Steve pressed putting the pastrami sandwich he had been prodding in Bucky’s general direction all afternoon down on the table next to him. He slid it towards the soldier with his fingertips.

Bucky shook his head, his focus out of the small, spyhole-style window on the side of the bunker they had been stationed in was unmoving. His eyes looked more grey than blue in the snow-bleached light of the frigid Russian evening, his breath was clouding in front of him in slow puffs of mist and his brow was furrowed and he leant his chin on the rifle he had pointed out into the cold forest.

“No one’s there, Buck,” Steve sat down behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

The muscles tensed in protest under his palm so he removed the touch, sighing in defeat. The look on the soldiers face was more one of anxiety than determination or anger, but it was manifesting as cold, hard concentration, an almost desperate need to complete tasks and follow orders.

Fury had directed them to stay a few nights and scan the area. They were working on a hunch that the Russian militia _might_ be working in the area. It was so remote that anyone there apart from them would have been up to something and Fury had seen it as a suitably risk free and low-stress mission for Bucky’s induction. The little bit of Hydra left in the soldier was now in overdrive. He had been given his orders. Orders meant submission, and failure meant punishment. It was all very black and white.

“Don’t do this to me, James,” Steve warned, “Stay with me.”

The last words jolted the frost and direction of Bucky’s gaze and he removed the rifle from the windowsill.

He looked around the bunker. It was plain, concrete walls and floors and two single beds that they had ended up pushing together, more to brave the icy wind that whipped through these parts of the mountains so brutally and seemed to find any orifice in the small building to take advantage of. It certainly reminded him of combat, missions and initiatives, but there were little things dotted around the place that weren’t so sterile and unfriendly.

The few novels that Steve had bought with him, sprawled across his bed in various different stages of completion, there was a pair of yellow and red striped socks on the floor and the photograph of Steve and himself that the Captain insisted on taking with him anywhere that was not Washington was on Steve’s nightstand, facing the bed where he could see it. Steve was smiling, Bucky not so widely but it was a smile all the same. It smelt less like concrete and rifle lubricant now too, and more like familiar cologne and hot chocolate from a thermos flask. Little things like that reminded Bucky that he was not the Winter Soldier anymore.

“You’re right,” Bucky muttered, rubbing his eyes and standing up, pulling Steve into his shoulder and holding him there, smoothing his hair and pressing his nose into the top of his head, “You’re right, I keep forgetting that this is nothing like…like _this_.”

Bucky gestured to his left arm, his fingernails clinking almost inaudibly against the slick titanium, arranged in a complex series of layers that sheathed together like scales on a snake.

Steve smiled, kissing the tip of Bucky’s nose, the skin was cool against Steve’s mouth and blushed from exposure to the wind.

“Just want you to be happy,” Steve whispered, winking as he ran his fingertips up Bucky’s sides, ghosting under his t-shirt and feeling the bare skin break out in goose-bumps.

Bucky closed his eyes as his blood rushed downwards in response to the stimulation. A bolt of anxiety tightened his stomach. They were on a mission, nothing personal was supposed to matter.

But it did.

He wanted Steve, every part of him. The way his palms were rough and worked with callouses from years of gripping that shield, the way his mouth twitched when he lied or the way his eyelashes cast dark shadows on his cheeks like spiders when the light was right. He wanted all of this regardless of the little voice inside that told him he would be punished and beaten if he so much as thought about deviating from the task at hand. His brain was in a conflict between knowing that there could not possibly be anything wrong with something that felt this good, and falling straight back into the turmoil of the corrupt and bent cause and effect of Hydra’s conditioning programme.

“I’m happy,” Bucky assured, kissing the Captain deeply.

 

He was. Steve was keeping out the cold.


End file.
